


Grief: The End of Amazing Grace

by PropheticOphelia



Series: Personal Essays from School [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Cancer, Gen, Grieving, Me dealing with my grandmothers death, Mentions of Cancer, My final essay for my english class, Original work - Freeform, Other, my original work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-03 00:46:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10956201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PropheticOphelia/pseuds/PropheticOphelia
Summary: This was my final essay for my previous English class, I chose to do a loose descriptive essay about my grief for my grandmothers death. For this particular piece, I'm not exactly looking for criticism considering that I wrote this for me, but I am sharing it with yall because I do feel like it's a good representation of grief.Also the essay looks shorter here because Ao3 does not particularly support MLA format unless I edit my preferences and I think it's dumb and useless considering I mostly post fanfic. So there's that.





	Grief: The End of Amazing Grace

Grief /grēf/ noun: deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone’s death. Ex. “She was overcome with grief”. Grief is something that is hard to explain, but it is something that we all as normal functioning human beings experience countless times throughout our life time. This essay is going to be describing the direct moments when grief had hit me the hardest during my grandmothers 1 ½ year battle with cancer. She was my best friend, second mom, and number one supporter than I can do anything that I set my mind to, she believed me when I didn’t even believe in myself. I am just sorry that she will never see me walk the stage again, and I never shall because what is the point without her?

The first instance of grief that felt like grains of sand slapping me in the face was the day we got the news that she did have cancer, of what kind the doctors couldn’t agree but she did have cancer. I remember feeling like I was in a violent sandstorm, a white noise overcame me as the people who were around me tried to talk me as I started to think about the desert consuming my every bone. I imagined death caressing my body, whispering a hymn I can no longer recall as I made myself sit down on my bed. If I were to be honest, I don’t remember much of that day besides insisting I go to work and working with a blank bleak mind, like the deserts of Arizona with the high rising sun and the violent landscape. Many people have different descriptions of grief, for some it was drowning constantly or being stuck somewhere where no matter how much a person struggles they can’t escape from the horrid thoughts. For me, my grief was a high and dry kind, the kind that makes a mouth parched for water but no matter how many times the throat is soothed when they open their mouths nothing comes out but dry air.

A second instance of grief that I have experienced is when the symptoms of the cancer started to leak into our everyday lives. My grandmother couldn’t eat, she was only able to keep down a couple of bits until in the end she couldn’t even hold that down, throwing up everything that went into her mouth that wasn’t water. She couldn’t sleep, the pain of her stomach paralyzed her and the pain of her lungs not getting enough air due to the swollen lymph nodes kept her up. I think the worst part was the loss of control of her limbs, she couldn’t hold herself up anymore or even stand up on her feet, and when she did walk we had to use a walker to help her shuffle her feet on the floor. I can hear in my head her sobbing as she moved her legs in agony and moaning quietly “I want to die, God help me!” under her breathe as she trembled to hold onto the walker, her grip tight and deathly white. I remember feeling helpless as I tried to assure her she will survive this, she will be dancing by the time of her 49th anniversary party she desperately wanted.

The third instance is when she was admitted to MD Anderson Hospital up in Houston when she went for a routine checkup with her cancer. They kept her for observational purposes but in the end they found the causes and reasons for her recent failed health despite her chemotherapy treatments. She had multiple cancers throughout her body that didn’t show up in the KAT scans at all, they misdiagnosed her to the point they admitted to my grandfather if they gave her more chemo to fight the cancers, she will be dead within the week. That weekend the hospital released my grandmother and she was allowed to come home, but her time was limited. My mind couldn’t understand that it was her time, her ending was coming sooner than I can comprehend and all I can feel is the hot desert air whipping in my face leaving sand in every crevasse in my body.  
I didn’t fully understand until the day before her death, with her in a coma and barely breathing by herself surrounded by family and friends who prayed and prayed for her to leave peacefully. I stayed up that night, listening to her wheezing in a coma and imagining the open skies of the desert and the bright sun blazing in my face, drying my tears as they leave my eyes. She awoke the next morning incoherent and barely able to talk, we thought it was a sign she was getting better and soon she will beat cancer, she will live. She passed later on that day, it was Spring Break and she had her wished fulfilled, all of her grandkids talked to her and she had her husband by her side as she shuttered her last breathe. She looked at my grandfather and he held her hand, still hoping she will power through until the bitter end.

The last and final instance of grief that I have expressed openly was when they were lowering her casket into the dirt, returning her to the dirt she so loved to dig into for her garden. Her white casket was the last thing I saw as the desert overcame me and the sand came pouring back out in grief, I felt myself be stripped of my last shield against the bright sun and it overcame me, burning me to the core. I held onto to whomever was holding me up, gripping their shirt as I hear the echoing of bagpipes playing ‘Amazing Grace’ one last time, I felt the desert leaking from my body and encasing me in a sandstorm that still follows me and will forever. I see her in my dreams most nights, I envision her as what she used to be before the cancer stripped away her skin and bleached her bones. She was my sun, the vast desert that seemed barren of life and love but underneath the cracked earth was life and love, blooming to those whom she loved and trusted.

Most people only saw her as a pretty face with no brains or smarts, a vast desert that people saw that trapped my grandfather. They never understood that my grandfather is much like a cactus: prickly and even mean to whomever he feels like deserves his ire, and she was the only one who managed to ignore his prickly outer self and tended to his heart like her beloved garden. She moved with her feet solid on the ground and her face towards the sun, she acted like a delicate flower from a fields of flowers but she was a desert flower, she persevered where most would wilt. I could go another 10 pages describing how my grandmother had changed the lives of every person she had ever met, how outward appearances didn’t matter but the inside did. Personally, I don’t think I will be able to overcome this grief that has consumed every breathe that has left my lungs since her funeral and has lingered in the back of my mind. My grief is the manifestation of what I used to associate with my grandmother, and probably will be forever until I return to the earth as well. I can now imagine the grains of sand in my fingertips as I touch her things throughout my house, how her smell takes me to the bleeding skies of the desert and of what I have lost and what never happened. I never got the chance to watch her favorite movie one last time with her (‘Pride and Prejudice’) and I never got to share with her my new found love for musicals that Hamilton and Cats (Which I do recommend) had brought to my heart.

This essay is shorter than some of my other works that I have produced for this class, but for me the quality is worth more than the quantity. Grief is something that cannot be touched by mortal hands but it can be describe, drawn, sung and smelled as it has been for centuries. Grief is what has started revolutions and revolts, it is the essence to any person who strives to be better than their ancestors before them. I have fundamentally changed as a person, as most people do in the face of a new day without what was there before and having to pretend that everything is okay. I wish I can say that I can beat the desert but as I am typing these final words I can feel the sand coming back and the sun blazing on my back, or that just might be the hot computer lab getting to me finally.

**Author's Note:**

> Angry that you don't know how to comment on here? Spit hot fire in my tumblr asks: http://batuu-khan.tumblr.com/


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